Ethiopia Sidamo Coffee Beans 90+ Chelan Meng Coffee: Flavor Characteristics and Features

FrontStreet Coffee's Ethiopian coffee beans have always been renowned for their wild fruit flavors. Ethiopia's natural Arabica gene pool attracts bean hunters from all over the world, and Ninety Plus Coffee (90+) is one of those captivated by Ethiopian coffee. FrontStreet Coffee is here to introduce FrontStreet Coffee's 90+ Carmen coffee bean.

What Is 90+?

Ninety Plus Coffee, a premium coffee supplier from the United States, was founded in 2006. In the decade since, Ninety Plus has made coffee professionals worldwide recognize its unique charm, leading an unprecedented wave of premium coffee enthusiasm around the globe. Starting with its first coffee in 2007, it has been the precious top choice for coffee experts and competition contestants alike. Today, Ninety Plus is synonymous with world-class premium coffee, with taste and quality far surpassing other expensive coffees.

Ninety Plus takes a completely different approach to naming its beans than typical premium coffees - it doesn't use region or estate names. Instead, each variety is named according to its flavor profile. "Carmen," for example, means "best approach" in the local dialect. Starting from a flavor concept, then naming, then selecting regions and partner farms - it's clear that Ninety Plus is a brand with a boutique operational style.

"Ninety Plus" doesn't mean all coffees scoring above 90 points. Good coffee appears one year and may not the next, and sometimes it appears in different estates with different flavor characteristics. Ninety Plus refers to a series of 13 premium coffee varieties. These coffees come exclusively from Ninety Plus Coffee, the American premium coffee creator. All are Ethiopian Heirloom old varieties, grown to maturity in ecological environments and processed under artistic standards to optimize flavor. Processing is Ninety Plus's specialty - they separate the coffees by variety, microclimate, and harvest timing, taste each one individually, and design a specific processing method for each flavor profile to reach a particular taste characteristic. It's much like the major fashion houses: meticulously researched and crafted with heart, close to a work of art. Natural products undergo countless refinements and improvements before they present their most beautiful form.

FrontStreet Coffee Ethiopian Sidamo Carmen

Country: Ethiopia
Region: Sidamo 90+SNNP
Altitude: 1750-2000 meters
Processing: Natural Process
Variety: Local Native Varieties
Roast Level: Light-Medium Roast

Coffee Growing Region

The source region of FrontStreet Coffee 90+ Carmen is actually Sidamo, not Yirgacheffe. Sidamo lies in Ethiopia's southernmost highlands, at altitudes between 1400-2100m. It's a famous premium coffee region in southern Ethiopia, bordering Kenya and situated southeast of Jimma and directly south of the capital. Sidamo coffee typically has prominent sweetness, which is why it tends to be more popular with most people.

FrontStreet Coffee's Sidamo coffee flavors are extremely diverse. Different soil types, microclimates, and countless native coffee varieties - combined with towering mountains, highlands, plateaus, valleys, and plains within the region - create diverse topography. The local geology is fertile, well-drained volcanic soil, with soil depth of nearly two meters and surface soil in dark brown or brown. The region's greatest advantage is that soil fertility is maintained through organic-matter cycling, using fallen leaves from surrounding trees or plant residues as fertilizer. These factors produce clear differences and characteristics in the coffee from each town area.

Processing Method

The ancient natural processing method makes pure flavors hard to achieve, but with Ninety Plus technical support, Drima Zede hand-selects only the most mature cherries. The natural drying process involves constant, careful stirring to ensure uniformity. Sidamo green beans are slightly grayish, some large and some small, with acidity that is both soft and intense, appropriate body, and sweet-and-spicy aromas - one of the garden coffees of the southern Ethiopian highlands. Unlike typical African coffees, Sidamo has clear fruit acidity, a smooth texture, and delicate floral and grassy aromas.

The final result is a very transparent, pure taste with significant changes between hot and cold. The aromas of fruit, flowers, and oak barrels are extremely captivating. Unlike typical African coffees, FrontStreet Coffee's Sidamo coffee has clear fruit acidity, a smooth texture, and delicate floral and grassy aromas.

As an Ethiopian natural-process bean, FrontStreet Coffee 90+ Carmen, after strict supervision and selection, avoids the annoying earthy impurities and high defect rates common in natural beans. Instead, it highlights the charming sweetness that natural processing is praised for. FrontStreet Coffee believes this 90+ Carmen's fruity profile inherits the captivating aroma given by traditional Ethiopian natural processing, unreservedly expressing a rounded, full-bodied sweetness with a lingering aftertaste and just the right mouthwatering fruit acidity. Daily brewing is also easy to master: whether using clean drip brewing or rich siphon brewing, the beans show their inherent character beautifully.

Washed green beans and natural green beans

FrontStreet Coffee Roasting Analysis

FrontStreet Coffee's roaster believes that to roast out the explosive fruity aroma of 90+ Carmen, a fast roasting method should force out the coffee's fragrance, at a light-medium roast.

Set the drum temperature to 200°C when loading the beans, damper at 3. After 30 seconds, adjust the heat to 150°C, damper unchanged. Return temperature point at 1'32", 103.7°C. Dehydration time at 5'21", when the bean surface turns yellow and the grassy aroma completely disappears. Adjust the heat once at 150°C; when dehydration is complete, adjust the heat to 100°C and the damper to 4.

At 8 minutes 45 seconds, ugly wrinkles and black spots appear on the bean surface, and the toast aroma clearly turns to coffee aroma - this can be defined as the prelude to first crack. First crack starts at 9'00". Listen carefully for the first crack sound, adjust the heat to 80°C, and open the damper fully to 5 (adjust heat very carefully, not so low that cracking stops). 1'55" after first crack, unload at 195°C.

FrontStreet Coffee Brewing Recommendations

Dripper: Hario V60
Water Temperature: 90°C
Coffee Dose: 15g
Ratio: 1:15
Grind Size: Medium-Fine (BG 6m: 80% pass-through rate on China standard #20 sieve)

To brew out the tropical fruit aroma, rounded full-bodied texture, and delightful fruit acidity of FrontStreet Coffee 90+ Carmen, use a segmented brewing method.

Use 30g of water for a 30-second bloom. When pouring with a small stream in circles to 120g, segment the pour. When the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed, continue pouring to 225g and stop. Wait for the water level to drop until it is about to expose the coffee bed, then remove the dripper. (Timing starts from the bloom.) Extraction time: 2'00".

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If Ethiopia's bright, floral-fruity style is what draws you in, start with FrontStreet Washed Yirgacheffe. As an entry point into Ethiopian specialty coffee, it delivers the clarity that makes Yirgacheffe famous - distinct jasmine florals and bright citrus acidity, light and elegant, with a tea-like body that drinks like a clean, refreshing lemon tea.

For a natural-processed expression, FrontStreet Ethiopia Sun-Dried Red Cherry is a lovely next step: only fully ripe red cherries, dried on raised beds, then medium-light roasted to keep the elegant florals and bright acidity while adding tropical fruit, a full fermented sweetness, and a rounded body. Its profile shows peach, cocoa, honey, and lemon.

And if you want the bright, perfumed side of Ethiopia at its most overt, FrontStreet Ethiopia Sun-Dried Huakui - from the Hambella area of Guji, Sidamo, 200 hectares under traditional natural processing for 21 days - is medium-light roasted into a light wine-like ferment, florals, citrus, and mango, with honey sweetness, a cocoa edge, and a thick, lingering body.